Mission Canyon

by Meg Gardiner

  On the floor, Jesse struggled to prop Adam up. The sirens wailed outside. Lights kaleidoscoped across the windows, blue and red. Jax and Tim made for the door.

  I said, ‘‘Thank you.’’

  Then they weren’t there anymore.

  I heard doors slamming out front, voices raised, cops talking. Adam breathed raggedly. Jesse spoke to him.

  ‘‘That’s it, breathe, hang in there just a minute longer, they’re coming now.’’

  Adam turned his head to look at Jesse. His lips moved, but his words were inaudible.

  Jesse leaned toward him. ‘‘I can’t hear you, buddy.’’

  Adam tried again. ‘‘Last leg.’’

  Jesse swallowed. ‘‘No. Come on, stay with me.’’

  ‘‘Can’t. It’s up to you, anchorman.’’

  ‘‘No. Open your eyes, come on.’’

  ‘‘Not your fault.’’ He looked at Jesse. ‘‘I’m so cold.’’

  Jesse listened, and watched, his face inches from Adam’s.

  He said, ‘‘Ev, get the cops. Get the paramedics. Now.’’

  I ran to the stairway. At the bottom of the stairs I could see flashlights. The cops came through the front door of the warehouse, guns drawn.

  ‘‘He’s not breathing,’’ Jesse said. ‘‘Adam. Son of a bitch.’’

  ‘‘Up here,’’ I shouted. ‘‘Hurry.’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘Breathe, Adam. Come on, do it.’’

  I raised my arms. ‘‘We need the paramedics. My friend’s not breathing.’’

  Jesse said, ‘‘Get up here!’’

  And I knew what had to happen. The lights and muzzles swung my way. A voice shouted, ‘‘Facedown on the floor. Hands behind your head.’’ I did it immediately.

  The cops spread out, fanning across the ground floor. I knew they wouldn’t come upstairs, across open ground, until they thought they were secure. And they wouldn’t send in paramedics, either.

  Jesse shouted, ‘‘He isn’t breathing. Help me.’’

  I turned. Jesse was trying to support Adam’s head, and fighting, impossibly, to give him CPR. He couldn’t lay Adam flat, couldn’t clear his airway, couldn’t get him in a position where he could give him chest compressions that made a difference.

  I called down the stairs, ‘‘Hurry.’’

  The cops were coming up the stairs, stopping at Win Utley’s body, checking it for signs of life. I heard one say, ‘‘Jesus, there’s another one underneath him.’’ The flashlights zigzagged up the stairs. In the loft I heard Jesse pushing on Adam’s chest, three compressions and silence when he breathed into his mouth.

  Feet above me now, a sharp voice saying, ‘‘Don’t move,’’ hands grabbing my wrists and pulling them back. I felt the cuffs snap around my wrists. They turned to the door into the loft, and one said, ‘‘Whoa.’’ Beyond Mickey Yago’s corpse Jesse held Adam’s face in his hands.

  The officers said, ‘‘Move away from him and lie down.’’

  ‘‘Help me,’’ Jesse said.

  ‘‘On the floor, facedown. Move it.’’

  He kept doing compressions. ‘‘Take over.’’

  ‘‘Now.’’

  That’s when the buzzing started in my head. The officer crossed the room in two steps, grabbed Jesse by the collar, and dragged him away from Adam. Another cop talked rapid-fire into her radio, calling for medical assistance. I saw Jesse facedown on the floor, the policewoman kneeling at Adam’s side, and Adam hanging limp, soaked in blood, eyes wide.

  More feet came running up the stairs, and I heard Lieutenant Rome telling me to keep cool. He hurried into the loft.

  The policewoman got on the radio again, calling for bolt cutters, urgency in her voice. Jesse was saying, ‘‘Don’t stop the CPR.’’ Rome hovered above them, and I saw him give the cops a look. Jesse said, ‘‘Breathe for him, come on’’—and Rome went to his side. The buzzing in my head got louder. Rome was on one knee, his hand on Jesse’s back, talking, and I didn’t hear his words, refused to hear them.

  ‘‘You’re wrong,’’ Jesse said.

  Rome called to the cops, said, ‘‘Uncuff this guy.’’

  ‘‘Don’t stop,’’ Jesse said.

  The cuffs came off and Jesse crawled back to Adam’s side. He gripped Adam’s hand, calling his name. Rome knelt beside him.

  ‘‘Son,’’ Rome said, ‘‘he’s dead.’’

  31

  The sun was out, red light seeping through the afternoon haze. My eyes felt as though they’d been scrubbed with steel wool. I felt drained to the point of numbness, sitting in the interview room at the police station, waiting for Lieutenant Rome to come back and tell me it was time to take the drive to the county jail. An entire day of questioning hadn’t gotten him whatever answers he hoped to get.

  The doorknob turned. I looked up and my spirit shriveled.

  Dale Van Heusen stood in the doorway. He was pulled together with origami neatness, the suit stiffly pressed. An indecipherable look rode his face.

  ‘‘Let’s go,’’ he said.

  I stood and accompanied him through the station. I didn’t see Rome, didn’t speak to anybody, received only a cursory glance from the man at the front desk. We walked out into the late afternoon.

  He put his hands on his hips. ‘‘You’re free to go.’’

  For a second I squinted at him. ‘‘How—’’

  ‘‘I’m not as useless as you imagine, Ms. Delaney.’’ He sucked his teeth. ‘‘This is now a Bureau matter; that’s all you need to know. Should there ever be a prosecution in regard to the deaths at the warehouse last night, you can expect to be called as a witness. But you’re under no threat of criminal charges yourself.’’

  I tried to assess him. I was feeling faint. ‘‘That’s good to hear.’’

  He buttoned his suit jacket. ‘‘And we’re square. From this point forward, we owe each other nothing.’’

  ‘‘What about Jesse?’’

  ‘‘He won’t be hearing from me.’’ He smoothed his tie. ‘‘Conveniently for him, the people I was after are dead.’’

  ‘‘Adam Sandoval’s dead too,’’ I said.

  His hand hesitated, stroking the tie. ‘‘Yes. I’m sorry about that.’’

  A erratic light roamed his eyes. It may have been sincerity or regret. Either way it was too little, too late.

  He looked over his shoulder at the door. Jesse was coming out. Van Heusen said, ‘‘I’ll leave you two alone,’’ and headed back into the station.

  Jesse looked wrecked. His hair was lank, his face pale, his eyes sunken. His shirt was smeared with blood. I wanted to throw my arms around him but held back, not sure how he’d take it. He stopped, facing the red sun, staring someplace distant.

  He looked as if he wanted to speak but was waiting to catch the moment when his voice wouldn’t crack, as if a rough syllable would throw the master switch and blow everything to shreds.

  He said, ‘‘I have to go back and get my car.’’

  I knew there was no way he could cope with returning to the warehouse. I said, ‘‘I’ll get it.’’

  ‘‘No, I need it. I have so much to do.’’

  ‘‘You don’t have to do anything, Jesse.’’

  ‘‘I have to call Adam’s priest. And his relatives, he has cousins in New Mexico.’’ He closed his eyes. ‘‘I have to tell them he’s dead.’’

  At that last word, his shoulders dropped and he pressed his fingers against his eyes. And I did put my arms around him, cradling his head in my hands. He leaned against me, and I felt him start to shake. But abruptly he pulled back. Maybe it was me, or being outside police headquarters, but he didn’t want to relent, give it up.

  ‘‘Come on,’’ he said.

  He crossed the street and kept going along the sidewalk in front of the courthouse. The big building was tinted coral in the light.

  ‘‘What Yago said last night, right before he got shot. I know what he meant.’’ He stared straight ahead. ‘‘When h
e said I hadn’t told you, that I didn’t know myself. I do now.’’

  I kept pace with him, waiting for him to say it.

  ‘‘It’s about Harley.’’

  ‘‘Her gambling?’’

  ‘‘That summer, before the crash, it was getting worse and worse. Stints in Vegas, losses to bookies. Until one day I stopped by her office and found her with a lot of cash.’’

  ‘‘How much?’’ I said.

  ‘‘Thousands. I walked into her office and found her stuffing it into envelopes,’’ he said. ‘‘I thought she was stealing it from her firm’s client trust account to pay off her gambling debts.’’

  But she wasn’t. I knew now, she wasn’t. ‘‘What did you do?’’

  ‘‘Confronted her. Told her I’d go to the head of the firm and turn her in.’’

  ‘‘And what happened?’’

  ‘‘She broke down. It was pathetic, Evan. She was on her knees begging me not to expose her. Such a tough woman, falling at my feet, wrapping her arms around my legs and weeping.’’ He shook his head. ‘‘I told her I wouldn’t turn her in if she put the money back and went to Gamblers Anonymous. That night. I said I’d drive her to the meeting.’’

  ‘‘And?’’

  ‘‘She clung to me, thanked me, said she’d do it.’’

  ‘‘And?’’

  He looked at me. ‘‘You see where this is going, don’t you?’’

  ‘‘What happened to the money?’’

  ‘‘I put it in the bank for her.’’

  ‘‘How much?’’

  ‘‘Ninety-five hundred dollars.’’

  He stopped. We looked at each other.

  I said, ‘‘You smurfed.’’

  It was a structured transaction, meant to keep under the Treasury’s $10,000 reporting limits.

  I ran my hands through my hair. ‘‘Oh, Jesse.’’

  ‘‘I thought I was helping her. Thought I was keeping her clients from getting ripped off too.’’

  His gaze drifted. Not, I thought, into the distance, but into the past.

  ‘‘Harley did come to see me in rehab. Told me she was going to a recovery program, meetings three nights a week. Proud of herself, saying she was getting straight. She thanked me for shocking her into it. That’s what Yago was making fun of. Imitating her, and he knew everything she’d said to me. She scammed me, Ev, to keep me from turning her in. She never stopped gambling, never stopped laundering money for Yago.’’

  ‘‘Did you tell the police?’’

  ‘‘Yes.’’

  ‘‘Do you think Brand is the one who helped Yago get his claws into her?’’

  ‘‘The cops can find that out.’’

  His voice was flat. He wasn’t trying to shade his words, wasn’t trying to protect my feelings anymore. He didn’t care.

  I looked at the sun sinking toward the rooftops, reddening the western sky. ‘‘Jesse, what Adam said to you— about the anchor leg.’’

  The anchorman was the final member of the team, the one who was counted on to bring home the victory.

  He stared at his hands. ‘‘He meant it’s up to me to get Brand.’’

  He didn’t say find. He didn’t say turn in.

  ‘‘I know what I have to do,’’ he said.

  And I knew what he meant. It turned my heart to ice.

  32

  I heard the phone ringing. I had fallen asleep on top of the covers, facedown on my bed. I fumbled to my feet, knocking a glass of water off the nightstand, grabbing the phone. By the light coming through the window, I could tell it was evening. My hair was still damp from the shower, so I couldn’t have dozed for long. The scent of jasmine hung lush in the air, and hibiscus flowered outside, violent red.

  Amber Gibbs’s voice brought me awake. ‘‘Oh, Evan, it’s awful.’’

  ‘‘Yeah.’’ I pressed the heel of my palm against an eye.

  ‘‘Is it true you were down there when people were shooting?’’

  ‘‘How’d you find out, Amber?’’

  ‘‘Things are crazy here.’’

  ‘‘Crazy how?’’

  ‘‘Junior went nuts. Tearing up his office and screaming at people. We had to call Pops in Washington, D.C., and finally Mrs. Diamond came over to calm him down.’’

  I was now wide-awake. ‘‘Amber, back up. Why did Kenny get so upset? Because he heard about the shootings at the warehouse?’’

  ‘‘No, your boyfriend.’’

  When did I grow an apple in my throat? ‘‘What about Jesse?’’

  ‘‘He came rolling in here saying he had to see Junior. He set him off like a bottle rocket.’’

  Not again. ‘‘Is he still there? Do you need me to come over and break it up?’’

  ‘‘No, Junior went tearing out of here with Mrs. D, and Jesse left right after them.’’

  She may have kept talking, but I didn’t hear it. I hung up and tried to reach Jesse. No answer at home, on his cell, or at the office. A breeze swirled through the windows. I felt a presence again, the way I had the night before, the shadow of death. The people who are left only want to shut you up. Irrevocably.

  Grabbing my keys, I jumped in the Explorer and floored it toward Jesse’s house. Pulling into his drive, I saw that his car was gone. I went in, calling his name, but he wasn’t there. I stood in the living room looking around, trying to find any evidence to tell me where he’d gone. The breakers cartwheeled up the beach in the red sunset. The Yellow Pages were open on the kitchen counter, and I saw at which page. Firearms.

  He couldn’t have bought a gun. Not this evening, not from a licensed dealer.

  Who was I kidding? He was resourceful, and relentless, and . . .

  And a good shot.

  Somebody was either going to get killed tonight, or go to prison. I couldn’t let it be Jesse. Think, I told myself. Where would he have gone? Only one place.

  I phoned Dale Van Heusen. ‘‘I’m going to Kenny Rudenski’s house.’’

  ‘‘I can be there in twenty minutes. I’ll meet you outside, ’’ he said.

  I got in the Explorer and gunned it toward the foothills.

  At Kenny’s house, the only car in sight was Mari Diamond’s white Jaguar. No Porsche, no Audi. The setting sun turned the mountains a sharp blue, threaded with gold seams of rock. I was feeling déjà vu. Had it been only twenty-four hours since I was up here looking for Adam?

  I pounded on the front door. Nobody answered. I stared into the security camera and said, ‘‘Kenny, open up.’’

  They had to be here, I thought. I left the door and walked to the window of Kenny’s study. The blinds were open, and his computer was on. The screen was displaying video footage—I could see motion. Trying to get a better look, I pushed through the bushes bordering the window. And stepped on the dog.

  One of the Dobermans was lying in the bushes. I jumped, ready to run, but the dog didn’t move. Pushing the bushes aside, I bent down and saw that the dog was dead. Its head was crushed. It had been hit with a hard, heavy object and dragged out of sight into these flower beds. My throat constricted. Fearfully, I touched its fur. It was warm. The blood on its head was wet. This had just happened.

  Mari would never have done this. Frightened, I looked around again. Heard nothing, saw nothing outside. Took another look through the window at Kenny’s computer screen: The video on-screen was from the Mistryss Cam system. Oh, my God. I saw Mari, somewhere inside the house, banging on a closed door. I heard no sound, but her mouth was working frantically, and I could read her lips. Help.

  Where was Van Heusen? I couldn’t wait for him.

  The front door was locked. I ran around the house to the patio. The lawn was emerald in the fading light. The patio doors were locked. Finally I found an open bathroom window. I leaped and grabbed the sill, pulled myself up, and shimmied through. I opened the bathroom door and listened for a burglar alarm, or footsteps, anything. . . . I crept out, looking around. I heard Tim North telling me, self-defense begins w
ith awareness of your surroundings.

  Well, rightie-o. Surroundings: house of weirdo who may want to kill me. I crept along the hallway, hearing my shoes scuff on the wood.

  Mari was locked up somewhere in here. Where? I looked in the living room. Everything was in place: Steinway gleaming, glass memorabilia cases in mint condition. Into the kitchen; the big refrigerator hummed, but the room was still and clean.

  I heard a sound, a cry coming from farther back in the house. I picked up a skillet from the countertop. Tim’s voice again, lecturing me . . . Pity will get you hurt.

  I put the skillet back and took a meat cleaver from the magnetic knife rack. The biggest thing on the rack, with a thick handle and a gleaming blade that looked sharp and heavy enough to decapitate a pig.

  I started toward the sound, down the hallway past Kenny’s office. I held the meat cleaver flat against my leg. The noise again, the crying, behind me now. I turned. It was coming from a door in the hallway, the door to Kenny’s wine cellar.

  Scratching and whimpering, the sound of fingernails scraping wood. Raising the cleaver, I pulled the door open. And as soon as I did, I knew the scratching was not the sound of fingernails. It was the sound of claws. I slammed the door.

  Right on Mari’s Chihuahua. The dog squealed, I pulled the door open again and it skittered to its feet, eyes bulging. I jumped back.

  It glared at me, the Chihuahua Terminator, then turned tail and ducked back into the doorway. Holding the cleaver higher now, I pulled the door all the way open.

  There was no sign of Mari. Instead, a staircase went down into the cellar. The yelling was coming from beyond another door at the bottom of the stairs.

  This was without doubt a human voice crying for help, accompanied by the sound of a hand beating on wood.

  I called, ‘‘Hello?’’

  The pounding intensified. So did the crying. The Chihuahua tottered down the stairs, claws ticking. At the bottom it pawed at the door, whimpering.

  Banging, frenzied now. ‘‘Open the door. Open the door.’’

  ‘‘Mari?’’ I said.

  ‘‘Let me out. Open the door.’’

  Should I wait for Van Heusen? I checked the hallway, saw nobody. I ran down the stairs. The door at the bottom had a dead bolt lock; the key was in it. I turned it.